Roughly 4% of the world’s population is affected by a rare disease, and while we are learning every day how to better diagnose and treat these conditions, there is still much to uncover. Rare Disease Day, which lands on the last day of February every year, seeks to raise awareness and improve access to care for patients and families living with rare diseases. For both scientific and clinical perspectives, we speak with Dr. William Gahl from the NIH, as well as Linda Manwaring, a genetic...

We don’t usually hear the words science and art together, but we’ve been misled -- science and art exist together on multiple planes, constantly informing each other in beautiful and unexpected ways. This is the second episode in our two-part mini-series on science and art. Here, we’re joined by visual artists and science communicators Kelly Montgomery and Sophie Wang. They both discuss how they’ve used art to communicate big ideas, and how scientists can approach making knowledge more...

Did you know you could scuba dive for science? Well, that’s exactly what Gaby Keeler-May does in the waters of New Zealand! In our latest Young Scientist Spotlight episode (#15!), learn about how Gaby’s scuba diving class in Santa Cruz, California, led her to investigating invasive seaweeds in New Zealand! We discuss how she conducts each dive (safety first!) and what they do with the tons of seaweed they pull from the waters (spoiler alert: it may become your next meal!). Gaby also shares...

You feeling stressed? Well take a break from your work and listen to our latest Young Scientist Spotlight with Sero Parel, a Neuroscience graduate student at Princeton University! Sero is interested in studying stress and how stressful moments can change the course of our developing brain. For Sero, their research goes way beyond any old science experiment. Their work asks fundamental questions about what is actually happening to the brains of those whose lives are impacted by certain levels...

We don’t usually hear the words science and art together, but we’ve been misled -- science and art exist together on multiple planes, constantly informing each other in beautiful and unexpected ways. This is the first episode in our two-part mini-series on science and art. Here, we’re joined by choreographer-slash-educator Suba Subramaniam and computational-biologist-slash-generative-artist Dr. Alex Naka. They describe how they each blended science and art through their own career journeys,...

New Year, new you, new …. ant? Dr. Balint Kacsoh, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses his work on the genetics of social interactions in ants in our latest Young Scientist Spotlight. Listening to this conversation, you’ll learn a ton of interesting ant facts, like how ants bites are used to staple together wounds in the jungle. You'll also learn some amazing ways that ant research can help us understand how loneliness affects disease progression. From 3D printed ant models...

Stephanie Renee is a non-traditional undergraduate student. After working in non-scientific fields, she decided to go back to school a few years ago to pursue a bachelor's in neuroscience with the goal of becoming a clinical neuropsychologist. In this spotlight interview, she shares her experiences working in a metastatic breast cancer lab, her thoughts on science education and research training as an undergrad, as well as her love for weird medical history facts, which she talks about in her...

“All day strong, all day long”, “the painkiller hospitals use most”, “the extra strength pain reliever”. We see pain reducing drugs like Advil and Aleve advertised all the time. But how do these drugs actually work? Can they relieve all types of pain? What about prescription drugs? Why are opioids the best we have, and awful at the same time? How are new medicines evaluated? And is anyone trying to find a way to make all the pain go away? This is the second episode in our two-part...

For this eleventh installment of “The Spotlight” we interviewed Oluwasegun Akiniyi, a bioengineering masters student at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. We talked about his education journey and current research endeavors using a robotic device to rehabilitate the hand of stroke patients. We discussed how his identity influences his research, and the intricacies of pursuing a research career in Nigeria. Additionally, we discussed his newfound love for traveling and...

A brain is very computationally efficient – you can look at a group of objects and your brain will instantly calculate the average features (size, orientation, etc). But how fast is this process – can it even be done with images that flash by so quickly you aren’t sure if you even saw them? To learn more, we interviewed Maria Servetnik, a Master’s student at the University of Leuven in Belgium who is currently testing this hypothesis. In our conversation, we also discussed the importance of...

What do bumblebees and octopuses have in common? They’re both invertebrates - or as Dr. Yan Wang says, “the shiny and squishy things.” And what makes them different? Well, beyond the obvious, octopuses are extremely anti-social, while bumblebees depend on their societies to survive. In this episode, you’ll hear about Dr. Wang’s research on bees and how they get their roles in bee society plus a little about octopus cannibals. In the second half of the episode, Dr. Wang shares her perspective...

Ever stepped on a Lego? Taken a fall during a sports match? Had an awful headache? Yeah, we have, too. Why are they all such awful experiences? Well, simply put, they all cause pain. But… what exactly is pain? In the first episode of our two-part mini-series on pain, we will hear from experts in the field of pain research: Dr. Allan Basbaum, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomy at UCSF, as well as Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of...

How do our brains control reproduction (and eating, and sleeping, and drinking, and everything)? How do you submit your dissertation, get a PhD, move across the country, and join a new lab in the midst of a global pandemic without totally losing it? In this Young Scientist Spotlight, we talked with Dr. Katherine Hatcher to find out! This episode was produced by Celia Ford. Music used in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions on Free Music Archive. Dr. Hatcher also produces her own podcast!...

Science doesn't happen in a vacuum, and racism both in science and society contributes to disparities in the health outcomes of Black Americans. In this episode of The Spotlight, we talked to Dr. Debora Kamin Mukaz about her work studying how social factors and biology converge to affect risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Hear about her journey into epidemiology, and what doing this research means to her. For more info about the two examples of mistreatment of Black people by the...

Are you tossing and turning all night? Well, what’s the secret to a good night’s sleep, anyway? And what really is the answer to Billie Eilish’s album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Ying-Hui Fu, a professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Fu has been researching sleep for decades, and her book Sleep to Thrive is available now. Our conversation with her revealed why it’s important to prioritize sleep...

How do our brains know who’s boss? In this Young Scientist Spotlight, neuroscientist Dr. Nancy Padilla tells us how she studies social dominance in mice. In the process, she walks us through her journey from college in Puerto Rico to postdoctoral research in California, sharing lessons learned along the way. We can’t wait for you to meet this rising neuroscience star! This episode was produced by Celia Ford. Music used in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions on Free Music Archive. Episode...

These days, homeopathy and some forms of alternative medicine fall soundly in the realm of pseudoscience. Not only that, but the wellness industry has capitalized on the popularity of these practices in predatory ways, selling promises of improved health with no evidence to back them up. In the United States, the marketing of these alternative ‘wellness’ products primarily targets women – evidenced by yoni eggs, vaginal steamers, and more. If we turn back the clock about 150 years, however,...

If you live in an earthquake-prone area, there's probably one question on your mind a lot of the time: when is the next big one going to hit? In this episode, we talk earthquake prediction with Dr. Barbara Romanowicz, a geophysicist at UC Berkeley and the former director of the Berkeley Seismology Lab. And while earthquake prediction is definitely important, our conversation revealed to us that there's so much more we can learn from earthquakes. Earthquakes (and their sister natural...

“You just do things differently and that's fine!” In the fifth Spotlight, UC Berkeley's Jen Pearlstein talks about her research on how stress affects decision making, how she's making mental health care more accessible, and being a disabled scientist. Find her on Twitter @JenPearlstein and check out her blog, Voicing Vulnerability at http://voicingvulnerability.blogspot.com/. For more of Jen's writing about being a disabled trainee, read her paper linked below: Pearlstein & Soyster...

Artificial intelligence guides nearly every aspect of our lives: what TV shows we’re recommended, whose opinions we see on social media, what we buy, how we invest our money...the list is endless. But what does “artificial intelligence” mean? What do these algorithms know? If we could look inside a robot’s mind, would we see a reflection of ourselves? Dr. Dan Yamins, Dr. Kim Stachenfeld, and Dr. Grace Lindsay helped us explore what it means to be intelligent, and what separates humans from...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. In this week's episode, we talk to Dr. Madhavi Dandu, a clinician and professor of medicine at UCSF who directs the Master’s Program in Global Health, and Dr. Elizabeth Fair, an infectious disease...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. In this week's episode, we talk to Alexandra Keir, Jane Fieldhouse, Dr. Lucia Abascal, and Maeve Forster, who are students and staff in the UCSF Global Health Sciences program. Since March, they have...

Global Health in the Time of COVID is a miniseries from the Institute for Global Health Sciences at UCSF produced by Carry the One Radio. Each week, we speak to health experts at UCSF to learn more about them, their work, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their practice and research. Our first episode features Dr. Kim Baltzell, a professor of nursing at UCSF and director of Global Action in Nursing (GAIN), a project that promotes clinical training in sub-saharan Africa. This episode...

For this fourth installment of “The Spotlight” we interviewed Jhia Jackson, who is a sociology PhD candidate at UCSF. We discussed her educational journey, current research on pediatric palliative and hospice care, her career as a professional dancer, being black at UCSF, cats, and ways to stay sane in grad school. This episode was written and produced by Stella Belonwu. Music from this episode was acquired from www.freesound.org. Music included in this episode: Dinglebells by evanjones4,...

We pretty much all accept the idea that dinosaurs once roamed the earth, but this wasn’t always the case. A few centuries ago, nobody believed animals could even go extinct. It would take huge societal upheaval and a few very determined oddballs to change people’s minds. In this episode, we follow the eccentric geologists and fossil-hunters who uncovered the first dinosaur, with author Ian Lendler as our guide. This episode was written and produced by Arja Ray, Ben Mansky, and Nancy Cai....